Patients sue New York physician group's accounting firm over ransomware incident

A patient of an Albany, N.Y.-based physician group is filing a lawsuit against the group's accounting firm over a ransomware attack last December that resulted in stolen data, according to an Albany Business Review report.

Four things to know:

1. The Community Care Physicians patient filed a proposed class-action complaint in May against BST & Co., which suffered a ransomware attack on Dec. 7 that exposed data from Community Care Physicians as one of the firm's clients.

2. Some of the files accessed in the attack included patient names, birth dates, medical record numbers, medical billing codes and insurance descriptions. BST notified affected patients in February.

3. The lawsuit alleges the firm failed to implement adequate cybersecurity procedures and should have notified patients of the attack and information exposure in December. It also claims that BST did not provide enough protection for individuals whose data was stolen.

4. The lawsuit does not name Community Care Physicians.